High fidelity—or hi-fi or hifi —reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts (audiophiles) to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound to distinguish it from the poorer quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment, or the inferior quality of sound reproduction characteristic of recordings made until the late 1940s. Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has minimal amounts of noise and distortion and an accurate frequency response.
One effort to standardize the term was the 1966 German Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard DIN 45500. DIN 45500 approval was intended to provide audio equipment buyers with reassurance that their equipment was capable of good quality reproduction. In theory, only stereo equipment that met the standard could bear the words 'Hi-Fi'. This standard was well intentioned but only mildly successful; in practice, the term was widely misapplied to audio products that did not remotely approach the DIN basis specifications.
Read more about High Fidelity: History, Listening Tests, Semblance of Realism, Modularity, Modern Equipment
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or fidelity:
“The disinterest [of my two great-aunts] in anything that had to do with high society was such that their sense of hearing ... put to rest its receptor organs and allowed them to suffer the true beginnings of atrophy.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”
—Richard Rodriguez (b. 1944)